Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) has been called the first
American. He was certainly the outstanding American scientist of the eighteenth
century, a New World physicist.

He was the fifteenth of seventeen children born in Boston to
Josiah Franklin, an emigrant from Banbury, and Abiah Folger, an emigrant from
Norwich. Intended initially for the Church, he was sent at eight to a grammar
school (later the Boston Latin School), where he became the head of his class.
He learned to read and enjoyed doing so the rest of his life; hence his many
literary citations. Owing, however, to the cost, after one year he was sent to
George Brownell's school for writing and arithmetic. He failed arithmetic, but
mastered it later; nevertheless, it persisted as a weakness throughout his life.
At ten he became a school dropout as he had to assist his father, who was a soap
boiler and tallow chandler. The remainder of his excellent education was
self-taught.

Two years later Benjamin was indentured to his brother James,
a printer. Ever after he regarded himself primarily as a printer. At eighty-two
he began his Will, "I, Benjamin Franklin, printer"-noting only later
his having been an ambassador. Despite the call of the siren sea (he was an
adept swimmer) he devoted his private studies to journalism. He strove to
imitate the clear, smooth short style of Joseph Addison in the
"Spectator." At sixteen, his fourteen "Silence Dogood"
letters were published in the New England Courant; these, some say,
established the American style of literature. At seventeen he ran away from
Boston. Today his statue stands in front of the old Boston City Hall, now a
bank.

Franklin found employment as a journeyman with a printer,
Samuel Keimer, in Philadelphia, a city of 10,000 then the second largest in the
British Empire. He lived in the home of John Read on Market St. At nineteen he
was sent on a mission to London by the Governor, William Keith, who left him
stranded there without funds. He found employment as a printer, but did manage
to meet some prominent scientists such as Henry Pemberton and Hans Sloane (to whom he sold a rare asbestos purse). He was able to return to
Philadelphia the next year and renew his printing work, while assisting also in
a store to pay for his return trip. About this time he outlined a life plan
based upon frugality, industry, and truthfulness. He organized the Junto (a
"Leather Apron Club"), which met every Friday at a tavern to discuss
humane and practical questions.

At twenty-two he opened his own printing shop, which
prospered for twenty years. The following year he purchased the Pennsylvania
Gazette (later known as the SaturdayEvening Post). At
twenty-four, he became Public Printer for the Pennsylvania Assembly-followed
later by those in Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland. In that same year he
married the faithful, stay-at-home Deborah Read. Two years later their son
Francis was born, only to die at four. (Meanwhile, Franklin had had an
illegitimate son, William Temple.) At twenty-five he organized a subscription
Library Co. (When he died, his private library of 4,000 volumes was the largest
in the country.) In 1732 he published the first "Poor Richard: an Almanack"
(for 1773)-the one in 1748 sold 10,000 copies.

At twenty-seven, Franklin became Clerk of the Assembly. He
organized the Union Fire Co. (nineteen years later he formed the first American
Fire Insurance Co.). After four years he was appointed Postmaster of
Philadelphia. At thirty-two he had a daughter, Sarah (she married Richard Bache).
In 1743 he proposed a Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, which was formed
the next year as the American Philosophical Society with Franklin as its
Secretary. The year before he retired from printing at forty-two, he organized
an Association for Pennsylvania Defense. He was elected a member of the
Philadelphia Common Council. In 1749 he was elected President of the Trustees of
the Academy of Philadelphia, which he had proposed (it became the University of
Pennsylvania). At forty-five he was a Philadelphia member of the Assembly and
also an Alderman. Two years later he was made Deputy Postmaster General. At the
Albany Congress the following year he proposed a plan for uniting the colonies.
The next year he became President of the Managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital.
He assisted Gen. Braddock with transportation problems, and later himself
organized the Philadelphia Militia.

As a public man, at fifty-one he was a natural agent for the
Assembly to send to London, presumably for six months, actually for six
years-largely at his own expense. William Temple, who accompanied him, had an
illegitimate son, but managed to marry a London beauty in 1761, the year of the
coronation of George 111. (The son later became Governor of New Jersey, but was
reprimanded for disloyalty in his father's will.) At fifty-six, Franklin
returned to Philadelphia (he built a new house). Two years later he was elected
Speaker of the Assembly-only to lose out in his bid for re-election as a member.
Accordingly, the Assembly sent him back to England as its agent-later the agent
also for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. At sixty-three, he was made
President of the American Philosophical Society, renewed each year thereafter
until his death. Two years later he wrote Part I of his
"Autobiography" (Part II twelve years later, Part III seventeen years
later-incomplete). Unfortunately, George III had no interest in trade or
science-hence not at all in Franklin. At sixty-eight, having sent copies of
some state letters to Boston, he was arraigned before the Privy Council with
regard to a Boston petition, which was rejected. Franklin was dismissed as
Deputy Postmaster General and sent away in disgrace. After his wife died, at
sixty-nine he returned home.

Franklin was elected Postmaster General by the Second
Continental Congress; he was made a Pennsylvania Delegate to it. The year
following he was a member of the committee to draft the Declaration of
Independence and then a Pennsylvania Delegate to the Constitutional Convention.
At seventy two, he was one of three Commissioners sent to Paris and became
Plenipotentiary Minister to the French Court the following year. At seventy-nine
he returned and was elected a member of the Pennsylvania Supreme Council, then
President for three years. The next year he enlarged his house. He organized a
Society for Political Enquiries, of which he became President. He was also made
President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
(In his will, he freed his personal slave.) He was a Pennsylvania delegate to
the Federal Constitution Convention, where he introduced the Great Compromise
regarding representation. He gave the closing address. He died April 17, 1790,
and was buried in Christ Church graveyard in Philadelphia. There was a cortege
of 20,000 for this colonial patriot and American sage.

Throughout his life Franklin was prone to self-examination,
resulting in integrity. He exercised methodical discipline and reasonable order.
Exhibiting common sense, he was shrewd and pragmatic. He was sincere and honest,
he showed personal benevolence. His goal was human freedom and dignity. He was
amiable rather than aggressive, hesitant to offer an opinion that might offend.
He had good humor and a ready wit. He made lasting friends of all ages. He was
at home chatting before his fireplace or joking at the club. He enjoyed life,
good food, rum, and Madeira; he did not smoke, chew, or use snuff. He was
generally temperate, although while young he was addicted to low women and when
old he was till quite fond of the fair sex. In his will he left two extant,
philanthropic trusts: one to Boston and one to Philadelphia.

Franklin was an ingenious natural philosopher. He had a
genuine curiosity about natural phenomena: the dew on the outside of a tankard,
the quieting of disturbed water with oil, the heat absorbed by cloths of
different colors. On his ocean voyages he noted atmospheric phenomena and was
the first to measure the temperature of the Gulf Stream. In Maryland he rode
after a whirlwind. He observed that the path of a northeast storm did not have
the direction of the wind.

Although an amateur gifted in providing only qualitative
explanations, he was truly a physicist owing largely to his investigations of
electrostatics. He did not begin experimenting until his retirement approached.
Within four years from his start, at forty-one he published his
"Experiments and Observations." He had learned how to electrify an
electrical conductor permanently. He proposed a single electric fluid whose
excess signified a positively charged body; its deficiency, a negatively charged
one-an implication of conservation of electric charge. He was thus able to explain the behavior
of the charged Leyden jar and to predict the discharge of a metallic point. He
proposed an experiment to show that awful lightning was basically a large
electric spark-verified first in Paris and shortly after in a modified way with
his own kite experiment in Philadelphia. He was made Fellow of the Royal Society
of London, several times a member of its council, the first foreigner to receive
its coveted Copley medal. He was made a Corresponding Member of the French royal
Acad6mie des Sciences-the next American was Louis Agassiz a century later. He
received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Oxford, and St.
Andrew's.

Franklin was a
gadgeteer. Musically inclined (he played harp,
guitar, and violin) he made a so-called "armonica" with rotating glass
hemispheres of different diameters that sounded when touched. He made a flexible
catheter for his ill brother, a mahogany chair with a ladder beneath its cowhide
seat, a long arm to grasp books from a high shelf, and bifocal spectacles (Paris
1784)-not to mention his cast-iron stove, the Pennsylvania fireplace.

Franklin's religious ideas did not vary much from the
"Articles of Belief and Religion" he formulated at twenty-two to the
explanatory letter he wrote at eighty-four to the request from Ezra Stiles,
Congregational clergyman, President of Yale. He was essentially a
Deist-believing not in a disinterested God or a materially interested God or a
God morally concerned about the present, but rather in an eternal God of reason,
Creator of the Universe. God, of course, was governor of the world; He guides
(steers) it. To do so, communication is requisite; i.e., prayers. Hence on 28
June 1787 Franklin moved that the Convention begin each day with prayer-not
passed owing to the disbelief of three or four members. Franklin noted that the
building of the Tower of Babel had failed because of the lack of God's help,
which is requisite for men to cooperate-he cited Psalms 127: 1.

Franklin was not narrow in his religious outlook. When the
evangelist George Whitefield visited Philadelphia in 1739 for the Great
Awakening, the local clergy kept their church doors closed. The next year
Franklin assisted in the erection of a new building accessible to a speaker of
any religious persuasion. He himself contributed to the support of the
Presbyterian Church and to Christ Church for a pew; the latter was attended by
Deborah. In 1750, he assisted Sir Francis Dashwood prepare an abridgement of the
Anglican Book of Common Prayer. In his letter to Stiles, he agreed that Jesus
Christ had the best systems of morals and religion, but was inclined to accept
the doubts of the Dissenters as to His divinity. He believed in an afterlife,
but, in general, he had no interest in speculative philosophy, including
theology.